Nice and France wake up. Words and silence after the massacre
Rights — di Andrea Barolini
The death toll in Nice stands at 84, with 120 injured, 18 of them in serious condition. President Hollande: “All of France is under threat.”
Nice and France wake up. Words and silence after the massacre
The death toll in Nice stands at 84, with 120 injured, 18 of them in serious condition. President Hollande: “All of France is under threat.”
At least 84 people were killed on the evening of 14 July on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in the south of France. Mown down by a 19-tonne lorry that travelled roughly two kilometres along the stretch of road, which at the time was packed with crowds celebrating the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille.
La une de Nice-Matin du vendredi 15 juillet : carnage à Nice, neuf pages spéciales #Nice06
The traditional fireworks display had just ended, it was just a few minutes before 11pm when the vehicle drove onto the road, one of the most famous and busy in the city. Immediately thousands of people began fleeing in panic, in every direction. Some threw themselves over the railing onto the beach below.
"I only had a few seconds to get out of the way. I managed to shield my face from the debris flying in every direction. The crowd was in a panic: everyone was screaming, it was absolute chaos," an AFP journalist recounted. At the end of its run, the vehicle was stopped — tyres flat and windscreen riddled with bullets — in front of the Palais de la Méditerranée. A large security perimeter was immediately established and residents were ordered not to leave their homes. Meanwhile, on the Promenade des Anglais, the dead were being counted. Bodies on the ground everywhere. Injured people screaming. The first emergency responders rushing to the scene. A massacre.
Police search for possible accomplices
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve explained during the night that a further eighteen people were in extremely serious condition, out of a total of around one hundred and twenty injured, transported to hospitals across the city. The driver of the HGV — a white heavy goods vehicle — was shot dead by police: for now, he is the only person officially recognised as being responsible for the attack. But investigators are searching for "a number of accomplices who may have fled immediately after the massacre."
Christian Estrosi, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, also declared that "heavy weapons" had been found inside the vehicle. While some witnesses spoke of shots fired into the crowd, others described an exchange of fire with police. For now, however, this information has not been confirmed.
Hollande: "All of France is under threat"
No claim of responsibility has been received. However, documents belonging to a man are reported to have been found in the cab of the lorry. According to Le Monde, the man is a Tunisian resident in France, known to the authorities for minor offences and unknown to the special security services. President François Hollande described it as "an attack of a terrorist nature," noting that "all of France is under threat."
The Nice attack is the worst massacre in Europe since the Bataclan attack in Paris, which killed 130 people on 13 November 2015, and the Brussels attack (thirty dead) on 22 March of this year. In both of those cases, the attacks were carried out by the Islamic State group.
Le Conseil restreint de sécurité et de défense est en cours autour de @fhollande après le terrible attentat de #Nice
State of emergency extended
The first concrete response from the Élysée was the decision to extend the state of emergency by a further three months, which had been activated in the wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The French Council of the Muslim Faith, for its part, condemned the massacre "in the strongest terms": "France has once again been struck by an attack of extreme gravity. A hateful and despicable attack carried out on the very day we celebrate our values of liberty, equality and fraternity."